


Swear Not By the Moon

by brynnmck



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-22
Updated: 2007-03-22
Packaged: 2017-12-14 17:10:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/839316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brynnmck/pseuds/brynnmck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Lee wakes from a sound sleep to find a sweaty hand pressed over his mouth and shining, wicked eyes staring into his.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swear Not By the Moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fahye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fahye/gifts).



> The third ficlet in an impromptu [Five Birthdays](http://brynnmck.livejournal.com/97655.html) project.

Lee wakes from a sound sleep to find a sweaty hand pressed over his mouth and shining, wicked eyes staring into his.

"Shhh," Kara says, grinning.

Well, it's not like he has a whole lot of choice, what with her hand over his mouth, and it's way past curfew so a wrestling match would just get them both into trouble, so he just gives her the best "What the frak?" look he can muster with her pinky hovering near his right eyeball, and waits.

"Come on," she whispers. She plants a hand on his chest and uses it to shove herself upright— _ow_ —and in the darkness of the barracks, he can see she's got a bottle clutched in her other hand.

"Kara," he hisses, "what the—"

His dorm-mates are starting to stir now, groaning. "Apollo," comes Tiny's sleep-scratchy voice, "will you please tell your girlfriend to shut the frak up so we can all go back to sleep?"

"She's not—" Lee starts, but Kara interrupts,

"Jealous, Tiny?" and then laughs low when a paper-thin pillow comes flying at her head. She throws the pillow back, and Lee can hear Tiny chuckling.

"Come _on_ ," Kara repeats, turning back to Lee, and they've been friends for the better part of a year now and he knows that look on her face, knows that resisting her when she's in this kind of mood is only going to end with them being reprimanded or thrown in the brig or both, so he shakes his head, shrugs on the BDUs she tosses at him, and follows when she slips quietly out the door.

Their trek through the dorm and out across the grounds is somewhere between harrowing and hilarious; no one's really _that_ interested in making sure the cadets are tucked up in their beds every night, which is a good thing because they're anything but stealthy. Kara's snickering half the time, which just sets _him_ off, and she rams her shin into a corner as they're rounding it and they lose a good three minutes to her resulting interpretive dance of muffled swearing and hopping on one leg and him laughing so hard he can't stand up. But any superior who actually catches them would have no choice but to turn them in, so it's a relief when they finally make their way to the outskirts of the grounds, past the last patrol through the perimeter of trees and out into an open field, the sky high and glittering above them.

They take a minute to enjoy their freedom, him standing there with his face up to the stars, Kara spinning in a circle with her arms flung out on either side of her, both of them panting and laughing. When she eventually comes to a stop, Kara's face is flushed and her hair is in her eyes and he smiles at her like he rarely dares to, and she smiles back, her real smile, her perfect-landing smile.

"So," he says finally. "What gives?"

She half-walks, half-hops over to him. "It's oh-one-fifteen, right?" she says, brandishing her watch in his face.

"Yeah."

"So." She holds up the bottle between them. "Happy birthday, Lee."

He blinks. _Holy shit_. He's been so busy worrying about his final exams that he'd actually forgotten. "Hey." He huffs out a breath. "It _is_ my birthday."

She gives him a mock-concerned look. "And everyone says you're so smart."

He just raises an eyebrow. "And they're right, which is lucky for you and your grade-point, _Starbuck_."

"Don't be mean," she says, wrinkling her nose at him and waggling the bottle a little, "or no booze for you."

"Considering the cheap rotgut you usually buy, maybe I'm better off."

She rolls her eyes and unscrews the bottle top. "Drink, asshole."

"Well, since you asked so nicely." He tips the bottle back and takes a healthy swig, feeling the burn all the way down into his stomach. She nods approvingly and reclaims the bottle for a long drink of her own.

"OK," she says when she's finished, grimacing a little and wiping her mouth. "It might be kinda cheap."

He laughs. "It's the thought that counts, Kara."

She sticks her tongue out at him, and they stand there grinning. Then he says, "So… you couldn't have waited till, say, this afternoon to wish me a happy birthday? When I was, you know, _awake_?"

"Well, you know me, Lee." Her voice is low and amused. "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right, right? I hate coming in second."

He gives her a long look, then grabs the bottle back. "Your competitive streak is truly terrifying," he informs her, and she laughs.

"Says the guy who wrestled me to the ground over a sandwich."

"That was _once_. And it was the perfect sandwich."

"Uh-huh." She rolls her eyes again. "You can fool everyone else with that innocent good-boy crap, Adama, but not me. I'm on to you." And as soon as she says it, he can feel something change in the air between them, like someone just switched on an electrical current, or knocked the planet just a fraction of a degree off its axis. His heart starts to thud a little, his breath tighter in his throat; half a dozen moments like this between them in the time that they've known each other and he's never once known how to react. This time she's the one to break the stalemate, with a chuckle that's just this side of forced. "Leaving next week, right?"

It takes him a second to figure out what she's talking about, his mind still at the crossroads. "Yeah." He clears his throat. "Yeah. Two whole months at home—that's a weird thought." She smiles crookedly, and he asks, "You?"

She lifts a shoulder, her eyes skipping away. "Home. Maybe. I don't know."

It suddenly hits him that they haven't talked about this at all, that it's been months since they've gone more than twenty-four hours without seeing each other and now it will be weeks, miles, their whole lives before the Academy. "Hey, will you—"

"I'm not going to promise to write or anything girly like that," she blurts, her expression caught between hesitant and defensive, "so don't ask."

 _OK._ He nods, mulling that over, then cocks his head to the side. "You can write?"

A laugh bursts out of her, and she shoves at his shoulder, and he shoves back, and the world settles back into place.

"Hey," she says then, a light in her eyes that he's learned to be very afraid of, "I have an idea."

He takes a step back. "Does this idea involve superior officers in any way?"

She sighs. "Such a killjoy, Apollo. But no." She reaches into the waistband of her BDUs, pulls out a short-bladed knife and flicks it open. She holds her left hand up in front of his face, palm toward him.

He looks at it for a second, then snorts. "Kara. Come on. We have a test hop tomorrow."

"That's why we use our left hands, genius." She's watching him, and very little scares Kara but he can see the flinch hovering at the edges of her eyes, a kind of desperate hope and panic, and there's no way he can say no after that.

"OK," he says quickly, and grabs the knife from her hand, makes a small, clean cut across the pad underneath his thumb before he can think about it. She keeps her knife razor-sharp and there's no blood at first, then he flexes his hand a little and it wells red and he winces. "Ow."

"Pussy." But she hisses a bit as the knife slides across her skin.

"Pussy," he mimics, because she expects it.

She laughs, a little breathless now, and he reaches out and she meets his hand with hers, clasping tight. It stings like hell and the whole thing is childish and he couldn't look away from her eyes if his life depended on it. After a long, suspended moment, he feels her fingers loosen a little and he lets go, wrinkles his nose as she puts her hand to her mouth to suck the blood away from the cut. "Ow," she mumbles around her hand.

"Yeah," he agrees, mirroring her.

"Whose bright frakking idea was _that_?"

All he can do is chuckle. "Put some disinfectant on it when you get back—gods know where your mouth's been, and you don't want it to scar."

For half a second, something flashes in her eyes, something huge and bright and terrifying, and she smiles. "Maybe I do." And then, out of nowhere, she's off, running across the field, her hair dull gold in the moonlight and her cackle drifting to him on the late spring breeze. "Come on!"

He's too surprised to move at first, his head still spinning with what he just caught a glimpse of. "Kara! Where the hell are you going?"

"Anywhere! Come _on_!" she shouts back, and possibility wells in his chest, filling him up, and he shakes his head and laughs and runs after her.


End file.
